


"Shadows" Interlude: The Merrill Alphabet

by Flutiebear



Category: Dragon Age
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-25
Updated: 2012-02-25
Packaged: 2017-10-31 17:43:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 20
Words: 15,379
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/346737
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Flutiebear/pseuds/Flutiebear
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An "intermission" of sorts to "In the Shadow of the Gallows". The Alphabet Meme (from Tumblr) from Merrill's POV. Follows Elven alphabet, so only 19 updates, not 26. Should be considered "canon" for "Shadows", although not strictly essential; events such as the Wrinkles incident will be referenced in later chapters.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A is for Aravel

**Author's Note:**

> The "Masks" story arc in "In the Shadow of the Gallows" was not only a BEAST (30 chapters! Yikes!), but it also is the last major story arc that takes place before Act II begins. Yes. Act II. Hard to believe that after all this time, we still haven't even gotten to ACT TWO yet.
> 
> So as an intermission of sorts, and to help me get a better sense of Merrill's character, I decided to try out the Alphabet Meme on Tumblr for everyone's favorite First. It turned out fairly well, I think, so I decided to post it here.
> 
> A few notes: 
> 
> 1) I decided to follow the elvhen alphabet, not ours. That means it has only 19 updates instead of 26.
> 
> 2) The events here, while not strictly essential for understanding "In the Shadow of the Gallows", should still be considered "canon" or backstory or whatever for the "Shadows" universe.
> 
> Thanks, and hope you enjoy!

Her earliest memory is of pebbles.

Well, no, not precisely: She remembers sounds and smells from before, too. Glittering fireflies. Sweet campfire smoke. Lying on a man’s chest, listening to the snores rumbling within.

The first _complete_ memory Merrill has, though, is of pebbles. Or, rather, of dropping them.

She is four years old and dangling her head over the side of an aravel. The wind buffets her nubby braids against her face, stinging her eyes and clammy cheeks. Above her, the gales set the sails to singing, and like whip lashes, the brilliant scarlet sails flap and crack in deafening syncopation.

For years afterward, she was afraid of the sails, of the sounds they made, the tell-tale music of journey and exodus. But back then, it barely registered; it was all just white noise, like a waterfall heard from far away—or too close.

Allowing herself one last sniffle, she turns her focus to the road beneath her as it whizzes past: a smear of colors and lines, a river of mud and grass. Idly she wonders, if she just let go right now, whether anyone catch her in time.

She opens one fat, grass-stained palm. A small pebble tumbles out and down to the ground. 

She blinks, however, and thus misses the exact moment the stone melts into the mud-blur path below. So she drops another one, making sure to watch as closely as she can. But she misses that moment too. So another, and another. Drop. Drop. Dozens of stones over the side, one by one, but never can she see it; never once does she witness the stone becoming the road.

Only after all she has dropped all the pebbles does she realize she has none left to leave a trail to find her way back to the old camp. There’s no going back now.

Even now sometimes, if she closes her eyes, Merrill can still hear the sails flapping in the breeze, booming, unforgiving, carrying her toward the morning sun, and toward a new home.


	2. B is for Beer

“It’s beer,” says Hawke, clapping her shoulder. She flinches at the touch. “Just try it.”

Merrill peers at him, unable to look away from the droplets of liquid caught in his beard. Before a few days ago, she’d never seen a man with hair on his face (or throat, or forearms, or knuckles), and the sight still unnerves her. Hawke could be plotting anything behind all that hair, and she’d never be any the wiser. 

“I don’t know,” she says.

“You’ll like it,” says the other Hawke, the cute one. Merrill can’t remember his name, but she remembers those cheekbones well enough, and those bright blue eyes, and the size of his bare biceps. “It’ll put hair on your chest.”

At the mention of _chest_ , her eyes flick to his: massive, broad, like the angles of the Sundermount. Creators, it’s beautiful. She has the sudden urge to rub her cheeks against it, like a halla with an itch.

“Do I need hair on my chest?” She eyes the drink suspiciously. “Does someone stop by the alienage to check?”

Despite his size – he really is _very_ large; maybe he’s part kossith? – the cute one flushes instantly, his comfortingly bare cheeks betraying every thought and emotion, just as the Creators intended.

“No—you’re fine the way you are,” he sputters, rubbing the back of his neck. “I—I mean, not _fine_ , you’re better than fine--er, not that you’re not fine too. You’re just the right quantity of fine? Um.“

Merrill’s never made a man stammer before. She thinks she likes it.

“Just drink it,” Hawke snickers, “before Carver hurts himself.”

She looks from Hawke to his brother and back again. Shrugging, she takes a long pull.

And spits it out.

“Ugh,” she says, sticking out her tongue. “This tastes like river sludge.”

“Fizzy river sludge,” corrects Garrett over the sound of his brother’s raucous laughter.

“You,” she says to Carver, trying not to feel terribly betrayed. “You _like_ this?”

He chokes back his guffaws.

“Not really,” he says, his eyes still dancing in a way that makes her belly flip-flop. “But if you drink enough of it, the taste doesn’t really matter.”


	3. C is for Carver

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So technically, the letter "C" isn't in the Elvish alphabet. But I think you'll see why I made an exception in a second. :)

They’re the only ones still awake. Garrett and Aveline long ago retreated to their bedrolls, not even bothering to unpack their tents. But Merrill had wanted to gaze up at the stars a bit longer; she can see so many up there, glittering and dancing in the late summer breeze. It's almost as if she were back on Sundermount (although the thought doesn’t make her feel as homesick as she suspects it really should).

Carver had offered to stay up with her, too, and for a time, she was glad for his company.

Until this.

“Gahr-vahr,” she says.

“Close, but harder on the ‘C’,” he says. The firelight casts gentle shadows under his eyes and cheeks, catches in his hair and turns it nearly auburn. “ _Car_ -ver.”

“ _GAHR_ -ver,” she repeats.

“Khh,” he says, frowning. “Khh, khh. Like a crow.”

“Ghh. Ghhrow.”

“Honestly, Merrill.” He tosses a small twig onto the fire. “It’s not _that_ hard a sound to make.”

“Well, I’m sorry.” She crosses her arms and glowers at him unapologetically. “The Dalish just don’t have that sound. It’s not in our letters.”

His scowl deepens. “But you say my— _our_ last name just fine.”

“That’s because the sound is at the end of the word, where it’s supposed to be, not the front.” She makes an exasperated noise in the back of her throat. “Even dogs are born knowing how to bark.”

“Here,” he opens his mouth wide to reveal the pink workings within, “it’s the back of your tongue to the top of your throat. Try it. Khh.”

She glares at him. With a loud clomp, he closes his mouth. 

Sighing, Merrill uncrosses her arms, digging the heels of her palms into the sand behind her. “Language is meant to be like water,” she says irritably, “it’s meant to slide off the tongue, not plummet off it. Why speak at all if you’re just going to hack at each other?”

“Well,” he grumbles, “you have to learn how to speak trade tongue sometime.”

“I speak trade tongue just fine, thank you," she snaps. "Why don’t _you_ learn how to speak elvish instead?” 

He’s about to say something, but then the tension eases out of his face, and the words, whatever they were, die in this throat. His lips quirk upward, and he cocks his head, like a mabari listening to a new command.

“Alright then,” he says. “Teach me.”

“What?” Is he making fun of her?

“Teach me.”

“You.” She chuckles bitterly. “ _You_ want to learn _elvish._ ”

“Why not?” He lopsidedly grins at her—the same way his brother grins, except he doesn’t have a beard to make it look secretive and mysterious—and she begins to entertain the possibility that he might actually be serious.

“Because—“ The fire suddenly pops, and she’s grateful for the distraction. “Because it’s for elves, that’s why. Not humans.”

But her rebuff makes him grin all the harder, the reflected firelight in his eyes twinkling like the stars above. “Come on. Teach me. It’ll be like our secret code.”

“Elvish is not a _code_ ,” she says, but it’s hard to put as much heat behind the words as she’d like, especially given how enthusiastic he looks, how he now rubs his hands together, just as Varric does right before he launches into a story.

“Just think of it,” he says in a low voice. “I can let you know when Bonny Lem’s trying to rip you off. And I’ll always be able to tell you when Templars are nearby. And—and I can even sneak into the Gallows, and get you all the books on old elf stuff I can carry. It’ll be like we’re undercover bards. The Bards of Arlathan.” He puffs out his chest proudly – but then falters a moment later. “Only—no more amulets,” he adds. “I don’t do amulets.”

Despite herself, she giggles. “And what do I get out of this?”

“Besides all the magic elf books?” He thinks for a moment. “I’ll teach you all the human curse words I know. Even the really dirty ones. Sound like a deal?” 

In the back of her mind, she hears a small voice, one that sounds much like Marethari, and it warns her to be careful, to not trust this shem too deeply, lest she be tainted by the capriciousness of human emotion. But Carver’s smile is so very, very infectious, and the real Marethari is so very, very far away.

“Sounds like a deal, Carver,” she says, nodding.

“There!” he shouts, pointing at her.

In his sleep, Garrett grunts loudly, like a bear, and Carver claps his hand over his mouth. The sight of such a large man hunched over like a wicked child makes her snicker, and now he’s laughing too, right through his fingers.

“Sorry,” he whispers. “But you did it. You said my name right!”

She grins. “Cahr-ver!” she repeats. “Khh. Khh!”


	4. D is for Door

Merrill hasn’t met many dwarves before—well, actually, none at all—but she’s heard enough stories to realize that Varric is an exception among his kind. For starters, he has the heart of a halla: gentle, sweet – even _motherly_. Not that dwarves didn’t or couldn’t have mothers (although for years she’d thought they simply grew out of untended damp earth, like mushrooms), but in the stories Paivel told, they always seemed so fierce or imposing, with all that hair on their face and food in their hair and grumpy voices that sounded like rocks rubbed together. Sweetness just didn’t seem part of their natures. But Varric is different. He’s more like Marethari than a mushroom, and that, she decides, is why she likes him. (Also, his cheekbones are bare. Very important for building trust.)

So when Varric pulls his strings (she doesn’t ask what he means by that; if he has landlords strung up in Kirkwall somewhere like puppets, she doesn’t want to know) and somehow arranges for her to have a house in the alienage – three rooms, all to herself: a luxury in such a cramped district, not to mention no more sleeping under the vhenadahl tree—she knows that he _means_ well. But—

“Varric,” she says, “Um. I don’t want to sound ungrateful, but I—I think this house might be broken.”

“Oh?” Varric turns from his inspection of the grounds underneath the vhenadahl tree and struts over to the stoop, where she has stood, unmoving, for several minutes. “What seems to be the matter?" 

She clutches the strap of her small pack, into which she crammed all of her belongings: mostly books, and tools, and shards. “There’s a board in the way, right where the entrance should be.”

For a long moment, Varric stares at the house, eyebrow quirked. Then he drags one hand slowly over his mouth, tugging at the skin.

“I’ve seen this before,” he says eventually. “It’s called a door.”

Chuckling, Merrill shakes her head. “Don’t be silly, Varric. That’s not a door. Doors are large stone things, and you need magic to open them. Nobody uses those anymore.”

“Humans have pretty dumb ideas about polite living sometimes,” he agrees. “Here, allow me.”

He reaches out to a curling bar of iron fixed to the board, and with a flick of his clever fingers, the metal gives and the wood swings inward, revealing the shadowy recesses within.

She turns to him in amazement. “How did you…?”

“The knob,” he says, mouth quirking ever so slightly at the sides. “You turn it, the door opens.”

“Hmm,” she says. “Dwarven hands are so clever.”

“That’s what Bianca tells me,” he says with a wink.

She eyes the open entrance with suspicion. “Are there many of these kinds of doors in the city?”

“You’ll start seeing them wherever you look.” Varric rubs his bare chin again. His honey-soaked voice is tinged with good humor—although she’s beginning to suspect that may be how he _always_ sounds. “You should come by the Hanged Man later, Daisy. Plenty of them there to practice on.”

She smiles broadly--until she steps inside. The place is a wooden box, no windows or smoke holes; it’s like the inside of an abandoned aravel, reeking of dung and wood rot.

“It’s so—“ Gingerly she steps inside, and the floorboard creaks loudly. “Empty.”

“Don’t worry,” says Varric. “We’ll set you up soon enough. Aveline already said she’d get you an old barracks bunk, and I’m sure the Hanged Man won’t miss a few mugs and plates.”

She stares at the floorboards, the walls, the ceiling, her eyes drawn to the blotted wood whorls, like arcane sigils in the dark. Although, she thinks suddenly, they’re probably just mold stains. Or worse.

“Is this—is this how city elves live?” she murmurs. “In wooden boxes, with more wood over the entrances?”

The dwarf chuckles, and the sound echoes through the empty chamber. “It’s how we all live, Daisy,” he says. “It’s the closest many of us ever get to a forest.”

“Oh,” she says. “Well, it is— _different_. It will take some getting used to. But I suppose, I suppose it’s better than living in an alley, or a sewer, right?”

“Or underground,” Varric agrees.


	5. E is for Eluvian

She talks to it sometimes. She tells it about her day, her adventures, her friends; the arguments she’s had with Anders; how much she misses Carver. She recounts stories from her childhood, the legends of the Creators and the Forgotten Ones, even the old histories she learned from Hahren Paivel. Sometimes too she even sings to it: Old songs in words she can’t translate, hymns of conquerors and heroes, and an empire that spanned all of Thedas.

“At least someone ought to hear them,” she mumbles.

She’s not sure why she talks to it—only that one day she begins to prattle on, as if she’d always been doing so, and she sees no reason to stop. After all, it doesn’t judge. It doesn’t tell her she’s stupid, or wrong, or that it’s leaving to join the Templars. It just sits in the corner, waiting, listening. 

It doesn’t reflect. It’s not that kind of mirror. Reflection shows things as they are, but this—this shows what once was, and what could be again. If anything, Merrill knows, she is the real mirror, the one reflecting her life onto broken pieces. The Eluvian simply receives.


	6. F is for Fool

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The events in this chapter were last referenced in "Masks XVIII: Not At All Likely To Collapse".

“I feel like such a fool.” Merrill stares balefully into her empty mug, and makes a face at her twisted reflection in the wet glass. “A fooly fool-fool _fool_.”

Clucking like a hen, Isabela gets up from the other side of the table, and slides down the bench next to Merrill, who leans into her warmth. Isabela smells like sea spray, and boot leather, and ale. Or maybe that last one is her. Merrill lost track two pints ago.

“It’s alright, kitten,” Isabela murmurs, leaning back against her shoulder. “Most of us have kissed Hawke. I think even Varric’s done it once or twice.”

Merrill groans. Of course Isabela had kissed Hawke. She’d probably done a lot more than that, too. Everyone loved Isabela, especially the Hawke men. Creators, it would be easier to hate her if she weren’t so _nice_ all the time.

“But Isabela, you didn’t see the way he _looked_ at me,” she mumbles. “Like I was a-a toad or a cave spider or something. It was awful. I felt like hiding in the plants.”

“Kitten,” says Isabela, snaking her arm around Merrill’s shoulder and giving it a squeeze. “Hawke doesn’t think you’re a cave spider. He’s just not… thirsty for your ale, if you catch my drift.”

Merrill shakes her head, which makes Isabela sigh. Her hand slips down to rub the tense plane of muscle between Merrill’s shoulder blades.

“Hmm.” The pirate leans her head against Merrill’s temple. “How do I put this? You, er, don’t have enough hair on your chest for our dear Hawke.”

“Oh no,” Merrill moans and drops her forehead to her arms. “I don’t need to drink more beer, do I?”

“He likes men, Merrill.”

“So do I.”

“ _Only_ men.”

Merrill looks up, stares at Isabela. “Oh. _Oh._ ”

“See?” Isabela shrugs. “It really _isn’t_ you. It’s him. As would be the case for any man fool enough to turn you down.”

“Well, why didn’t he just say so?” Merrill wishes the revelation made her feel better. Perhaps she should have drunk less beer. Or more. “Why did he have to just stand there, like a statue?”

“Well…” Isabela trails off.

“Well what?” Merrill turns her head to rest her cheek against her forearms, so she can look at Isabela without the room swirling around her head.

“It’s probably the first time he’s ever been in Carver’s shoes,” says Isabela with a wicked grin, "kissing someone who wishes he were his brother.”


	7. G is for Ghilan'nain

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ghilan’nain is the Mother of the Halla, and the chosen of Andruil, the Dalish Goddess of the Hunt. From the Elven Pantheon codex entry on DA Wiki:
> 
> "...They say Ghilan’nain was one of the People, and the chosen of Andruil the Huntress. One day, Ghilan’nain came across a hunter she did not know. At his feet lay a hawk, shot through the heart by an arrow. Ghilan’nain was filled with rage, for the hawk is an animal much beloved of Andruil. Ghilan’nain called upon the goddess to curse him, so that he could never again hunt and kill a living creature. Ghilan’nain’s curse took hold, and the hunter found that he was unable to hunt. Ashamed, the hunter swore he would find Ghilan’nain and repay her for what she had done to him. He blinded her first, and then bound her as one would bind a kill fresh from the hunt. But because he was cursed, the hunter could not kill her. Instead he left her for dead in the forest. And Ghilan’nain prayed to the gods for help. Andruil sent her hares to Ghilan’nain and they chewed through the ropes that bound her, but Ghilan’nain was still wounded and blind, and could not find her way home. So Andruil turned her into a beautiful white deer—the first halla..."
> 
> For the full tale of Ghilan’nain, read her codex entry on the DA Wiki.

“Is she—Will she—“

“Stop crowding me, Carver.” Silence. “Maker, Hawke, tell your brother to quit hovering.”

“Carver, let the man work.”

“But she—“

“ _Carver._ ”

Pain. Blistering, unyielding pain. The sound of tearing fabric. Pressure, careful, precise. A moan—possibly her own.

“Bloody hell, this is all my fault.”

“You’re bloody right this is your fault. What were you thinking, charging an ogre head on like that?”

“I—“ The sound of pacing. “I don’t know. I just kept seeing Bethany—“

“Carver.”

“I couldn’t, Garrett. I just couldn’t see anyone else die like that.”

“So I-we were supposed to just watch _you_ die like that? Merrill was supposed to?”

"I didn't know she..."

More pacing. An irritated sigh.

“Maker’s cock, Carver. Take that bloody arrow out of your shoulder. You look ridiculous.”

The sound of wood snapping. A sharp hiss. The squelch of open flesh, then a grunt. An arrow shaft hitting the sand.

“Now, Merrill, this might sting a bit.”

More pain, like tiny spikes driven under fingernails. A scream, ripped from deep within. Grunting, boots scuffling. Heavy fabric, like a leather jerkin, grabbed roughly. 

“Stop it! You’re killing her!”

“No, the ogre was killing her. _I’m_ healing her.”

More scuffling. A frustrated noise, animal, inconsolable.

“Carver, don’t make me knock you out.”

“Let me go. I’ll be good. Let me go.”

More silence. Pressure abating. A soft exhale from nearby, as if someone had been holding his breath.

“Alright, Merrill. Wound’s all clean. Now comes the nice part, I promise.”

Warmth. Comfort. Relaxation. Blue. Everywhere blue, and welcoming, and soft. The pain ebbs, the sounds become clearer. Birdsong. Labored breathing. The rolling tide of the ocean, like the snicker of halla, leading her home.

Merrill blinks, once, twice. Over her hovers Anders, sweat and black blood, not his own, dripping from his temple. He smells awful, like the sewer come alive.

She blinks again: A few paces back are Hawke and Carver. They look like startled birds. Especially Carver, whose fur collar is fluffed like ruffled feathers. Carver. She checks his shoulder. He holds a hand over the still bleeding wound, mere inches from his heart. But the arrow—the arrow is gone—

“Merrill,” he says, and flies to her side. “How do you feel?”

She groans; it feels as she has been bound for days and days, and the ropes have only just fallen away. Her gaze flicks to Carver’s shoulder again, and then back to his wide eyes, as blue and clear as the sky.

“Like Ghilan’nain,” she murmurs with a relieved smile, and closes her eyes once more.


	8. H is for Halfway

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The opening lines here are riffed off of an in-game banter between Merrill and Bethany have, but I thought it alright to appropriate them here, considering.

“So,” says Carver, reaching over to tear a hunk of bread from the loaf in Merrill’s hand. With a satisfied grunt, he leans back against the boulder face the two of them share. “There’s really no Circle among the Dalish?”

He stuffs the bread into his mouth, the whole thing at once, his lips barely closing together as he chews. Merrill knows she should be disgusted by his voracious appetite, but she’s not. Aveline, however, does scowl; from across the blanket and their packs, she kicks at his thigh with the pointy bit of her sabaton.

“Any child with the gift of magic is apprenticed to a Keeper,” says Merrill, peeling a vhenadahl fruit she’d purchased that morning in the alienage. It had smelled sweet, and a little like Ferelden, and she’d thought her companions might appreciate the nostalgia. “In another clan, if there’s no need in her own.” 

She tugs off a quarter and offers it to Aveline, who declines with a curt nod, and then to Carver, who takes it eagerly. When their fingers brush, he smiles, flakes of bread crust stuck to his lips. He swallows, sheepishly, and flicks his tongue across his lips, a flash of pink stretching all the way up to the shadow above his lip. She feels the blood rise to her cheeks, and returns her gaze to the fruit.

“Is that what happened with you?” He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. “Were you given away?”

“Carver,” Aveline says sharply. “Don’t be an ass.”

“No—“ He turns to her, eyes wide, hands spread as if he were placating a halla. “I didn’t mean—“

“It’s alright, Aveline,” says Merrill, forcing a smile. To buy some time, she bites delicately into a slice of the fruit, closing her eyes, rolling the juice around on her tongue. She’s never talked about this with anyone who wasn’t Dalish before. Or, for that matter, anyone who _was_ Dalish either. “Yes. There were already three in Alerion with the gift. So when the Arlathvhen convened, I was given to the Sabrae clan, and we went to live in Ferelden.”

As she speaks, Carver’s gaze softens, and he turns his attention to the frayed knee of his trousers. He runs his forefinger along the exposed fibers, back and forth, back and forth. “Were you mad about it?” he says gently.

“Why should I be mad?” Merrill regards the fruit in her hands, as if it held the right words to express her thoughts, then she shrugs as lightly as she can manage. “It was an honor. I was given the opportunity to use my gift for the good of all Dalish.”

“How old were you?”

She thinks for a moment. “Four.”

Carver’s hand jerks against his knee, and, and even Aveline, with her crossed arms and sternly canted chin, looks surprised. 

“Four!” Carver sputters. “Maker! Even Bethany didn’t show ‘til she was six.”

She tears off another quarter of fruit but doesn’t immediately eat it. Instead, she leans her head back against the boulder, the cool, solid rock soothing against the back of her neck and shoulders. 

“I manifested early,” she says. “It was just lucky that it happened close to the Arlathvhen, so that I could be apprenticed so quickly.”

“Four is awfully young to be apprenticed, Merrill,” says Aveline. “Didn’t the other clan have its own mages?”

“They did, but they were all caught by Templars,” Merrill concedes. At once, Aveline’s face hardens, and she looks like a marble statue, the kind lost in a forest somewhere, cracked and covered in moss. Aveline always gets that look when someone mentions Templars; Merrill only wishes she knew why. “They needed more, so they sent me.”

“So even though there’s no Circle, you were still taken from your family,” mutters Carver.

“That’s true.” She can’t quite decipher the expression on his face. She knows pity, the look of it and the lack of it, and it’s neither of those, for which she’s grateful. No, the tight line of his mouth, the way his eyes won’t quite meet hers, it’s something more personal, more familiar. “I haven’t seen my parents in over ten years. I don’t even remember their faces anymore.”

She’s not exactly sure why she said that last part—only that it needed to be said.

“It’s the same with my father,” he says. He draws his knees in, cross-legged, and leans one cheek against the boulder to face her, although his eyes are somewhere very far away. His hands fall to his sides, halfway between his knee and hers, with the fingers splayed against the soft soil. “Sometimes I forget how he looked. I have to remind myself he had a beard, and black hair, and a scar on his right eyebrow here.” He meets her eyes at last, and slowly traces the path of an imaginary scar with his forefinger.

“What about your sister?” Merrill says, shivering.

Aveline suddenly stands up.

“Where did Hawke get off to?” she says. She sounds like a hahren giving a proclamation. “I’m going to go find him.”

She clanks off stiffly.

Merrill watches her until she disappears. Her voice, when she finds it again, is small and brittle. “Did I say something wrong again?”

“No, Merrill,” he murmurs. “You didn’t.”

Merrill sighs and, leaning forward, puts the rest of the fruit back on the blanket. When she settles back, she lets her hands fall to her thighs, then to the ground.

The side of her little finger brushes the tip of Carver’s. She does not jerk away, and neither does he.

“I can still see Bethany,” he whispers. “I don’t know for how much longer, though.”

She nods. “Same with Tamlen.”

“Was he—?” Carver's voice is tight.

“No. More like you and Hawke.” She sighs, her lips quirking. “When I close my eyes, I can still hear him laughing, can still feel him tugging on my braids.”

Carver chuckles, a dry, exhausted thing lacking any mirth. “I used to do that to Bethy. Used to nail her braids to the bedframe.” He shuts his eyes. “What I wouldn’t give to do that again.”

She doesn’t say she’s sorry because even she knows that those are just words, hollow sounds that will only echo in the sudden void around them and never fill it. So instead she rolls her head bonelessly along the boulder, staring up at the cloudless sky through hot, prickling lashes.

The two of them sit there for a long time, wordless, thoughtful, their fingertips pressing together in the space halfway between.


	9. I is for Intercession

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The opening dialogue is taken from an in-game banter between Carver and Isabela.

“So, Isabela,” says Carver as his brother stops to talk with a trinketsmonger. Carver pulls a silly face for the dirty moppet behind the counter clinging to her mother’s side, and the little girl giggles. “You captained a ship? That’s a lot of men to handle.” Startled by his own words, he turns back to Isabela. “Um. For you to command.”

Even with his back turned, Merrill can easily hear Hawke’s choked-back snicker. Isabela smiles loftily at the quickly reddening Carver. “Well. Aren’t you just _adorable_ fumbling for a topic.”

“You say that like I’m harmless,” he says, staring sourly at the ground at Isabela’s feet.

Merrill takes the opportunity to glare at Isabela’s boots as well. She’s noticed the hungry way Carver looks at Isabela, and as grumpy as it makes her, she can hardly blame him. Isabela is simultaneously the most beautiful and most terrifying woman Merrill has ever seen. With her boots that go on forever, and breasts that move on their own gravity, and a swagger that makes Merrill seasick if she watches it for too long, Isabela is a goddess among mortal creatures. Merrill once saw a dockworker walk headfirst into a stack of crates as Isabela passed him by. When Merrill followed in her wake, he just rubbed his cheek and scowled.

“You’re as harmless as a pup that will someday grow into its fangs, and sink them deep.” Isabela runs her hand along an amulet, her fingertips skimming the shiniest curves. But before she can make the pendant disappear, Hawke points to it, and the trinketsmonger scoops it up and into the parcel with the rest of the purchases. Isabela silently glowers at Hawke, who winks at her. Her frown dissolves.

“Sure, keep teasing,” Carver mutters, oblivious. “I’ll show you how much of a pup I am.”

“I know,” she says, turning her grin from Hawke to Carver. “That’s why I do it.”

Carver then catches Merrill’s eye as if for the first time, as if they hadn’t just been clomping around the Lowtown bazaar together for the past two hours. When he smiles sheepishly at her, she turns away before he can see her scowl.

He huffs once, loudly, and stomps down the alley, to the nearby weapons peddler.

“Isabela, I don’t get it,” Merrill says. Like all things that fascinate and scare her, Merrill wants to study Isabela, to learn her secrets; Isabela is another broken mirror, Merrill thinks, one that she might even one day be able to see herself in. “Why do you want Carver to bite you?”

Isabela tosses her head back and laughs, her hand sliding to her belly. “It’s a metaphor, kitten.”

“Oh.” Merrill thinks for a moment. “For what?”

“For biting me,” replies Isabela, with a wink.

“Oh, I get it,” Merrill says, even though she doesn’t really. She checks to make sure both of the Hawke brothers are out of earshot before she continues. “Isabela—do you… _fancy_ Carver?”

“Sure I’d fancy him.” She smirks, running her fingertip along one pillowy lip. “I’d fancy him six ways ‘til Harvestmere and back again.”

“How would you—“

“Nevermind, kitten. It’s another metaphor.” She sighs and casually stretches out her toe in the dirt, the long line of her leg like a wicked blade stuck into the ground. “Why do you ask?”

“No reason.” Merrill shrugs in what she hopes is a convincing manner. “You do tease him a lot, though.”

“That’s because it’s fun to make a grown man blush,” Isabela counters. “It beats shopping with Mr. Chantry Sister over there.”

“Hey, I heard that,” Hawke says over his shoulder, dropping some extra coins in the scowling shopkeep’s outstretched hand.

“Will you teach me how?” Merrill murmurs, her eyes drifting back over to Carver. She catches him looking at her. But when their eyes meet, he hastily looks away, suddenly finding something of great interest in the shields spread out before him.

“How to make a grown man blush?” says Isabela in a sly, smooth voice that sounds like a leather boot pulled against skin. “Or how to make _him_ blush?”

Merrill looks back to Isabela, who stands there, hands on hips, still smirking, beautiful beyond all comparison or competition. Then she looks back to Carver.

“Both,” she says firmly.

“Interesting,” mumurs Isabela.


	10. K is for Keeper

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What’s funny about the word “Keeper” is that elves with this title are supposed to be the “custodians of the elven language”, according to DA Wiki, yet “Keeper” is a decidedly human word. We’re not given an indication of what the word “Keeper” is in Elvish. “Hahren” is the closest thing I can find (and in an alienage, the hahren is the alienage leader, so city elves use the term *like* they’d use “Keeper”), but technically the word refers to any elder within a clan: Hahren Paivel, for example, is not Sabrae’s Keeper, Marethari is.
> 
> I can’t even buy that “Keeper” is originally an Elvish word that has been subsumed into trade tongue, because, as I alluded to in the "C is for Carver" chapter, the “Khh” and “khe” sounds do not really appear in the base elven language. (Merrill does seems able to pronounce “kuh”, as in “Hawke” or the first “k” in “Kirkwall”, well enough, but that’s a different sound that requires an entirely different shape of the tongue. Try it out.) That implies that “Keeper” is not a native word, and was brought into the language only later on. 
> 
> (As an aside: Lest you think it strange that Merrill can pronounce one “k” sound and not others simply because of where the sound falls in a word, English has several of these so-called “restricted phonemes”. As Wikipedia points out, the sound “ng”, like at the end of “thing”, appears at the end of dozens of English words, but never at the beginning, as it does in Thai. And the hard “yhh” sound, as in “yes”, only ever appears before a vowel, and rarely ever (with the debatable exception of words like “boy” or “toy”) at the end of a syllable.)
> 
> So anyway, not to bog down the chapter with language lessons (although obviously I find this stuff kinda neat), but I just thought it a little ironic – and even maybe sad – that those in charge of maintaining the Elvish language are referred to, even by their own people, by an outsider’s word. It just goes to reinforce how much the elves have really lost.

“Well, it’s hardly a real altar, is it? It’s a stack of crates.” Merrill runs her forefinger along the outer ridge of the wooden box, under the oil-filled cooking bowl set to flame. Her fingertip comes away black and sticky. “And I don’t know what these designs on the vhenadahl are meant to be. They’re only red doodles.”

“You use what you can, to do what you can,” says Anders, eyes narrowing. “You’re hardly one to judge.”

She shrugs. Grumpy looks from Anders are nothing new, and nothing worth taking personally. “If the elves in Kirkwall wanted to get it right,” she says, adjusting the makeshift altar bowl so that it sits in the correct position, “then they‘re free to ask.”

“’Doing it right’ would no doubt mean slitting one’s wrists and frolicking around the big bush,” says Fenris, eliciting an appreciative snicker from Anders, who immediately tries to disguise it as clearing his throat.

“Naked,” adds Hawke helpfully. He elbows Anders.

Anders rolls his eyes. “It’s _always_ naked with you.”

“I like naked,” Hawke counters, and he waggles his eyebrows until Anders laughs.

“Elves don’t dance, naked or no,” Merrill cuts in. This is for Fenris’s benefit, she tells herself; if it were just the humans, she’d let them believe whatever they liked (although, in her estimation, it wouldn’t hurt for more humans to be like Carver and take a greater interest in world history). “Besides, it’s not a bush, Fenris. It’s a vhenadahl tree, a sacred symbol of our people.” She runs a hand along the tree’s incorrectly-painted bark. “Or do they not have vhenadahls in Tevinter?”

He glowers at her. “Slaves have better things to do than grow trees.”

She swallows a tart retort. _Questions are good,_ she reminds herself. _Questions are how we learn._ Even if Fenris’s questions usually sound more like insults and accusations than questions. “But your clan must have had some religion, some practice with which to remember their roots.”

“My _clan_?” His eyebrows disappear under his hair. “Slaves are not family. Slaves are property, nothing more.”

“But our people—“

“are not mine,” he says with a sharp slice of his hand. He sneers. “Keep your rotted people, Merrill.”

Merrill wishes, suddenly, briefly, that she were back home among her clan. But then she tilts her chin upward and lets her hand fall from the vhenadahl bark.

“Aren’t you listening?” she says firmly. “That’s rather the point of it.”


	11. L is for Lucky

“This is where you live?” Merrill gasps in wonder. She cranes her head around Carver to the potion-lined work tables, the wallop mallet hanging proudly on the wall, the fire still crackling in the hearth; and then up, up to the ceiling, to the cobwebs swinging from the rafters. Cobwebs! So strange, Merrill thinks, that human houses have them too.

“Yes,” says Carver softly, eyes on the floorboards. He doesn’t seem overly inclined to move out of the doorway, so she nudges past him and into Gamlen’s house. He doesn’t try to stop her, but nor does he follow her, either. “I’m sorry it isn’t nicer.”

“It’s very lovely,” she sighs. “It doesn’t even smell like you.”

“Uh—“ Carver looks up. He frowns. “Help me, Merrill. How should I take that?”

“I mean it smells like _other_ people, not just you. Like you and Hawke and—“ She points at the side room, where the almost-closed door doesn’t quite meet the latch. “Is this where you sleep?”

“Er, yes, but you don’t need—“

She pushes through the listing door and strides toward the center of the room. She is at once surrounded by rumpled pallets and dirty clothes piles and spilled sword oil and even a few books and papers and ink wells. Discarded leather jerkins. Empty liquor bottles. Bright white dog hairs everywhere, on everything. Beaming, Merrill stretches out her arms, spreads her fingers and spins, laughing, giddy. 

She tries to stop as soon as she feels dizzy, but she stumbles a bit before she can. Carver steps forward and grabs her elbows to steady her.

She sags into his touch, splaying her fingers over his forearms, and grins up at him.

“All your family right here, in one place,” she says softly. “You’re so lucky, Carver.”

He finally smiles, a small, furtive thing, as if she’s unlocked some arcane secret he doesn’t want the world to know.

“I suppose,” he murmurs.

His eyes dart toward her lips. He is very close now. She can no longer smell the rest of the family but only him, grassy and spicy and maybe even a little sweaty. It’s utterly _human_ , foreign, a smell that should by all logic disgust her, but actually, she finds she rather likes that smell. Quite a bit.

For a brief moment, she thinks that he might kiss her, and she thinks that she’d rather like that, too.

She leans into his touch, because as close as he is she wishes he were closer, and he licks his lips and swallows, throat bobbing, up and down, hypnotic, enticing. Creators, he’s certainly taking his time about this. Merrill decides that if he’s not going to, then she will; so she leans up on her tiptoes, and—

Then he releases her elbows and gently pushes her back.

“So yes, um, here’s where we sleep.” He blinks a few times, as if clearing away a dream, and by his side his hands clenches and unclench once, reflexively.

“Why did you do that?” she says.

His eyes widen to the size of altar bowls. “Do what?”

“You were going to kiss me, and then you didn’t,” she says matter-of-factly. “Why?”

“Merrill,” he groans, dragging his hand across his face.

“What?”

He looks at her for a moment, eyes clear and bright, then swallows again. “Did you—did you _want_ to kiss me?”

“Sure. I’ve kissed before, you know.” She steps toward him but he backs away.

“Here? In the bedroom I share with my brother? Knee-deep in our dirty trousers?”

She shrugs. “They’re just trousers, Carver.”

He closes his eyes, then holds out his hands. “No. No, I can’t. Not you. Not here.”

She folds her arms over her chest. Suddenly she’s feeling very cross, and the fading warmth on her hands, the lingering scent of him in her throat isn’t helping matters. “I’m sure you’ve kissed plenty of girls before, Carver. Why should I be any different?”

“Because you are,” he says defensively.

“Fine,” she says. “I don’t know what came over me anyway. Come on,” she says, walking around him toward the door, making sure not to brush him, not even just a little. “We should get to the Hanged Man. We don’t want to be late.”

She exits the house into a cool slant of late afternoon sunshine, which helps clear her head a little. Kissing a human _indeed_. She’s lucky the rest of her clan isn’t here. What would Marethari say? _Don’t embarrass yourself, da’len,_ that’s what she’d say, and then she’d frown and Merrill would wish she were a frog or a lizard or some other creature that could hide in a damp, dark place where no one else could ever go.

Carver comes out a few minutes later.

“I’m sorry,” he begins.

“Nevermind that,” she says brightly. “We should be going. Isabela said she’s going to teach me Wicked Grace tonight. I don’t want to miss it.”

She slips her hand into his and tries to pull him down the stairs, but he doesn’t move. She turns back to him. His cheeks are a bright scarlet, which makes his blue eyes seem even brighter, and his fingers are hot and clammy against hers.

“Carver,” she says.

He tugs her up the stairs and kisses her once, briefly, on the cheek.

“For luck,” he murmurs, letting his hand fall to his side. “Um. Alright. Let’s go.”

That night, she loses every single hand of Wicked Grace she plays. But she doesn’t really mind.

“One more hand,” she tells Isabela as she meets Carver’s eyes across the taproom. “I feel lucky tonight.”


	12. M is for Mythallen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It’s hard to believe I wrote “Dissension” only back in November! It feels so long ago that Carver got his knighthood and faced down riots in the Kirkwall alienage. And I admit it: Part of the reason I decided to do the Merrill Alphabet was the opportunity to revisit that arc and shed some light on what Merrill was doing during that time. So here you go.

The first time the woman talks to her, Merrill thinks she’s— _finally_ —about to be mugged.

The woman has blonde hair and intense eyes, and dirt smudges under her eyes that make her look like an insomniac. She’s dressed in leathers, like a Carta rogue, but doesn’t seem to carry any weapons (although, Merrill thinks hopefully, they could be concealed). She and a few similarly-dressed friends sit on the makeshift altars under the vhenadahl; they look like gossiping starlings, ready to abandon their perch at any minute. The soles of their boots drum against the meaningless red sigils painted on the sides of the altar crates.

“Your markings are beautiful,” the woman calls out, which is a strange way to begin a mugging, Merrill thinks.

“I know,” she replies. “And they’re not markings. They’re vallaslin.”

Her friends titter. But the woman holds out her hand, and they fall silent. “What are vallah-salim?”

“Vallaslin. Lines written in blood,” says Merrill. “My blood.”

“Oh. In that case, I really like them,” she says.

“Did they hurt?” calls out one of her friends, a male elf barely much older than Merrill. He grins wickedly, like he’s telling a terribly funny joke.

“Yes,” nods Merrill. She doesn’t know whether to approach them or let them come to her, so she stays where she is. But she thinks, with some sadness, that this is altogether too friendly; that there might not be a mugging after all.

“I have a tattoo, too,” another one says, snickering. “Want to see it?”

“Not particularly, no,” says Merrill. They break into disproportionately raucous laughter, considering Merrill didn’t think what she said could be interpreted as a joke. She shrugs and starts walking again toward her house, but then her step falters. She turns back toward the group. “You know, you shouldn’t sit on the altars like that.”

The laughter stops. None of them move. They just stare at her, like watchful birds. 

“I know it’s hard to tell that’s what they are, since they’ve been painted all wrong,” continues Merrill. “But they’re still altars, and you shouldn’t sit on them. It’s rude.” 

“We’ll take it under advisement,” says the blonde woman. The group erupts into giggles again, and there is something faintly distasteful about it all: the hard edge of their voices, the well-used armor but lack of visible weapons, the rap-rap-rap of boots against crates.

Irritated and faintly disappointed, Merrill rolls her eyes and enters her house, and does not come out again for several hours.

***

The second time she meets the woman is a few days later, as she’s leaving for Darktown to meet with Tomwise. The blonde sits on the altar, boots still drumming, as if she hadn’t left. 

When she sees Merrill, she hops down off the crate.

“Vallaslin,” she says, pointing at her cheeks.

“You remembered,” says Merrill. “Good girl.”

The blonde smiles, showing altogether too many teeth.

“I’ve seen you around Lowtown,” she says, as she saunters toward Merrill. “You’re the one who keeps herself apart. The Dalish with the human lover.”

“What? Me? No.” Merrill shakes her hands frantically. “Who?”

“The tall man,” says the blonde elf, crossing her arms. “The one with black hair and all those muscles. Is he the reason you were kicked out of your clan?”

“I wasn’t kicked out of my clan. I left. And Carver isn’t my lover.” She sighs and glances toward the ground, grimacing at the dust on her toes. “He’s a Templar now, I suppose.”

“Friends in high places,” says the woman. Her voice is high, lisping; like a dull knife-edge.

“And low ones too,” Merrill says with more lightness than she feels. “I’m off to Darktown. Would you like to come?”

The woman shakes her head.

“But you like humans,” she continues, as if Merrill hadn’t spoken. She takes a step closer toward Merrill, arms still folded across her chest. “I see you around them often enough. The captain of the Guard. The Darktown healer. Athenril’s old errand boy.”

“They’re different. They’re my friends,” says Merrill. “And if you’ve seen them, then you must have seen Fenris and Varric, too.”

“Like I said,” grins the woman. “Friends in high places. Are you a human sympathizer then?”

Merrill frowns. “A what?”

“A sympathizer.” The blonde narrows her eyes, pauses for dramatic emphasis, although for the life of her, Merrill can’t quite figure out what it is she’s trying to emphasize. “Do you think humans and Qunari and elves all should live all together in harmony? Forget the past, live in the now?”

“No,” says Merrill. “No, that’s really the opposite of what I believe.”

“Me too,” says the blonde woman. She unfolds her arms at last. “My name is Sylaise.”

“Like the Hearthkeeper!” Merrill claps her hands together. “What a fortunate name.”

“Indeed,” she says. “That’s why I chose it.” 

***

After that, Sylaise approaches Merrill often, asking about Dalish customs and rituals, about the elven language and symbology, even the history of Dalish weaponry. She seems most interested in Merrill’s role as a First, and what that meant within the clan, and although Merrill does not mention she is a mage, she does tell Sylaise everything else—even about the Eluvian she’s restoring. To her credit, Sylaise doesn’t even flinch when Merrill explains what the Eluvian was for. It’s a refreshing change, and one Merrill appreciates more than she ever expected.

“I don’t like her,” says Nyssa to Merrill one morning, as Merrill purchases her customary piece of vhenadahl fruit. “She’s dangerous.”

“She’s not dangerous,” says Merrill. “She’s just curious.”

“It’s the same thing,” says Nyssa, narrowing her eyes.

Something is strange about Sylaise, certainly, but she can hardly be blamed for it, Merrill thinks, as she knows so little about her people and her history (and Sylaise’s perpetual malnutrition, that bruised and sickly pallor, can’t be making the best impression). But Merrill doesn’t have many friends in the alienage—or, for that matter, any—so far be it from her to toss a fish back into the pond because it’s too small.

“Do you ever wish…” says Sylaise one day over a lunch of vhenadahl fruits and bread in Merrill’s house. Merrill has taken to buying a little extra, in the off chance Sylaise will drop by. “Do you ever wish the elves could be great once again? Have their empire, and their Eluvians, and everything they used to?”

“All the time,” replies Merrill. “As First, it was my role to preserve our people’s past—and to reclaim it if I could.” 

“Is that why you came here? To recreate the past?”

Merrill eyes the Eluvian in the corner. “In a manner of speaking, yes.”

Apropos of nothing, Sylaise balls her fist on the table.

“I heard an interesting elvish word the other day,” says the blonde elf haltingly. “ _Mythallen._ It means ‘children of justice’.”

“Also ‘children of vengeance’,” says Merrill, biting into a fruit slice.

“They’re the same thing.”

“Sometimes even the same man,” Merrill adds.

“I’m thinking of having my—my friends and I go by it.” Sylaise meets Merrill’s eyes. “What do you think?”

Merrill takes another bite, chews it thoughtfully. 

“Your friends like to laugh,” she says at last. “And that’s a very sad name.”

“That’s not what I mean.” Sylaise leans in conspiratorially, too close for Merrill’s liking, and she has to fight not to lean away. In her eyes is a strange and sickly gleam. “Do you want in?”

“Into what?”

“Our group,” whispers Sylaise. “We could use a First. Someone to teach us the old ways. The old magics, even. Our heritage.”

Merrill quirks an eyebrow. “Like a clan?”

“Yes, exactly. Like a clan.”

Merrill looks thoughtfully toward the cobwebs in her rafters.

“No,” she says slowly. “I can’t. I—I have a greater calling. But I can still teach you stories if you—“

Sylaise’s hand slams down on the table, a thunderclap in the hushed room. Startled, Merrill flinches backward.

“No,” says Sylaise, pushing her chair back with a loud scrape along the floorboards. Although her face is contorted with rage, her voice is still even, low. For the first time since she came to the alienage, Merrill feels a twinge of fear. “Keep to your calling, Merrill,” she hisses, “and we will keep to ours.”


	13. N is for Nightingale

“Won’t someone shut that thing up,” grumbles a bleary-eyed Varric as he trundles out of his tent. His jerkin askew, his fine trousers rumpled, he looks like an unmade bed. Some of his hair has fallen out of its topknot, and it sticks straight up toward the brightening sky, defying all gravity and logic and even – or _especially_ – good dwarven fashion sense.

Merrill stifles a giggle.

“You grumpy old man,” she says, nudging the dying embers of the fire with a stick. “It’s only a nightingale singing in the dawn.”

“Sounds more like tonight’s dinner,” he snuffles, “calling out for help.”

He lurches off behind a nearby tree, the nightingale still trilling its merry staccato. Even when Varric shambles back into camp many minutes later, the bird still warbles: first two beats, now four, now seven, now three. Varric plops down on a log next to Merrill and scowls at the glowing coals. 

“It already woke me up,” he grunts. “What more does it want from me?”

“It’s _singing,_ ” she says, handing him a steaming cup of already-poured coffee. “That’s what birds do.”

Varric takes the mug like a man dying of thirst, and for many moments, he simply sits there, silently listening to the call – or maybe he’s just staring thoughtlessly into the fire; it’s hard to tell with an early morning dwarf. Eventually, however, his brows knit together, and he sticks out his tongue.

“Pfuagh,” he grumbles, his fingers tightening around the metal cup, “it doesn’t even have the decency to pick a good song and stick to it.”

“Well, that’s what nightingales do.” she counters. “They remind me of you, actually.”

“You think of me as an obnoxious bird.” He takes a long, loud sip. “Really, Daisy, I’m touched.”

“No, silly,” she says. She pries his fingers from his mug and, with the fire-warmed carafe, tops off his coffee. “Nightingales are the storytellers of the bird world. They make it up as they go, and they never sing the same song twice—or, at least, not in the same way. I never get tired of listening to them.”

“Huh,” he grunts, his whole body shaking with the effort.

“Also they love roses,” she says, beaming. “Which if you think about it, are the crossbows of the flower world.”

“I hate nature,” he grumbles.

But behind the mug at his lips, Varric’s cheeks are bright pink, and the edges of his lips curl into a hidden smile.


	14. O is for Oliphant

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: Implied Animal Abuse ahead

“But look at the poor thing.” Merrill tightens her grip on the iron bars, behind which the grey giant in bright livery naps in a bit of late afternoon sunshine. “Where is his mother? His clan?”

“You can’t have a baby oliphant for a pet, Merrill,” says Carver, his eyes on Merrill, not the creature. “The thing will grow to the size of your house in a week.”

“I don’t want him as a pet, Carver,” she snaps. She leans her cheek against her fists. “Look at his back, his rump. He’s been beaten. Carver, he’s being _chained._ ” She points into the carnival cage, where the cold Hightown sunshine glints off dull steel. “He doesn’t have his mother and he’s scared and the Tevinters have chained him up. We can’t just leave him here. We can’t. _I_ can’t.”

Carver looks like he’s about to protest further, but the sight of the manacles around the massive, wrinkled feet deflates him. He closes his eyes and draws a long, steadying breath.

When he opens them again, Merrill knows she’s won.

“Where will we take him?” he whispers. “To Anders’s clinic?”

“No,” she says firmly. “We must get him outside Kirkwall. To the Sundermount. My clan will take care of him, you’ll see.”

“You’re crazy, Merrill,” Carver says with an incredulous smile.

“You’re not the first to think so,” she says in a brittle voice, a hard tilt to her chin. “I don’t mind if you do too.”

“No—no, I didn’t mean it like that—“ He fumbles back a step, drags his hand across his face. “I mean, I _like_ crazy. Your crazy, that is.”

“Oh,” she says, wondering if the word means something different to humans. “I like your crazy, too.”

He grins sheepishly at her. The baby oliphant grunts in his sleep. It sounds like laughter.

***

Merrill tugs on the oliphant’s yellow and purple show collar, while she can hear Carver straining with the effort of pushing against his hindquarters. The beast does not budge. “Go on, Wrinkles,” she grits through clenched teeth. “You’re free now.”

Carver leans around the creature’s hindquarters; his face is flushed, and sweat drips from his temples. “You named him Wrinkles?”

“Well, we couldn’t very well call him, ‘Hey you’,” she whispers.

“I suppose it _is_ better than ‘Ketojan’,” concedes Carver.

The oliphant raises his trunk and trumpets, a clarion call in the dark Hightown courtyard.

“Oh, no, no, don’t—don’t do that, boy,” she whispers, reaching for his trunk. Her heart thumping against her ribcage, she whips her head around, waiting for a gang to leap down from the rafters at any moment.

Carver scurries to her side.

“Here, let me,” he says, taking the collar from her hands and making eye contact with the animal. “None of that now, boy,” he murmurs. Gently, soothingly, he starts to run his hand along the top of the oliphant’s trunk. The creature leans into the touch, his eyelids sinking low and heavy.

“You like that, Wrinkles?” he whispers, slowly smoothing out the wrinkled flesh. “So did the ponies in Lothering. Oh yes, you’re a good boy. Yes.”

The oliphant’s trunk swings up to caress Carver’s shoulders, then his cheek, then his hair. At the touch, Carver giggles: an uninhibited, child-like sound, almost like the noonday ringing of the Chantry bells. He’s never quite laughed like that before. And now Merrill never wants to hear him laugh any other way ever again.

Then suddenly the trunk is on her face, gently patting her hair, her jaw. The touch is gentler than she expected; too gentle—it tickles like a feather.

The oliphant meets her gaze. With the tip of its trunk, it slowly traces the vallaslin on her cheeks.

“Don’t you understand, Wrinkles?” she whispers, taking his trunk in her hands. “We’re trying to give you your freedom.”

The oliphant sits on his hindquarters and does not move.

Next to her, Carver sighs heavily. “Maybe—maybe he doesn’t want to be free.”

Merrill fixes him with an intense stare. “Everything wants to be free, Carver.” She turns back to the oliphant and lightly runs her fingers along the top of his trunk. “Some things just don’t know how.”

***

Almost half an hour passes before Merrill has a flash of inspiration.

She grabs Carver’s hip pouch—eliciting a startled but intrigued “hey!” – and pulls out a hunk of something hard and nutty.

Wrinkles stands up immediately, his tail swishing behind him.

Merrill breaks off a tiny piece, and the oliphant catches it with his trunk. He brings the piece to his mouth. It vanishes. Immediately the trunk begins to strain for Merrill’s outstretched hand. 

“Mabari crunch?” Carver asks incredulously.

Merrill shrugs. “The halla used to love it.”

“Wrinkles,” he says, making a face. “You’re from Tevinter. I’d have thought you’d have better taste.”

***

“See, Wrinkles? The back gates of Kirkwall,” says Merrill, her hand resting lightly on the creature’s wrinkled skin. It’s softer than she expected, like the skin of Isabela’s boots. She beams at the oliphant.  “You’re almost out.”

“Looks like the porticullis is still up, probably for the carnival,” mutters Carver. “Only the doors to get through now.”

Merrill’s hopeful smile dissolves as a shout of alarm rings out from somewhere nearby. A small squadron of armored guards, about a dozen men, pour out of the shadows, circling the three of them.

“Great,” Carver mutters, unslinging his sword. Merrill unslings her staff.

At the sight of the brandished wooden rod, however, the oliphant begins to buck and bray.

“Wrinkles, no, stop, wait—“ Merrill tries to grab his trunk, his collar, but he refuses to be soothed.

“Step away from the oliphant,” shouts one of the guards. 

“I can’t,” she screams. “We have to calm him d—“

The oliphant trumpets once, sharply, and charges the guard advancing on Merrill. The guard shrieks and leaps out of his path.

Wrinkles snorts and whirls around, quicker than a creature his size should. Unconcerned with the shining armor or swords, the oliphant sights Merrill again and charges her. This time, she only barely dodges out of the way.

“It’s your staff, Merrill,” Carver yells. “He doesn’t like your staff!”

Merrill looks down at the weapon clutched in her hands: the worn finger grooves into the wood, the leather straps and hawk-feather favor dangling at the top. It’s a good staff, a trusty staff, one dressed in the ancient ways. But nonetheless, it’s just a staff, not a sharp blade or a powerful maul—nothing more than a large wooden stick.

She looks up. Wrinkles paws at the ground, and charges her once more. She throws the staff toward the wooden gate-doors. 

Wrinkles diverts his charge toward the flying wooden rod. He catches it in his trunk as he runs and snaps it like a twig.

The oliphant, however, careens too sharply and quickly to change his direction now. He bashes through the wooden doors, tearing through them like paper, and keeps charging onto the dirt path and the grassy hills beyond.

When Wrinkles has disappeared into the night, Merrill and Carver and the guards turn to regard each another once more.

“Just take us in,” says Carver, sighing.

“You set loose a monster,” says one of the guards in a hushed voice.

“We _freed_ him,” says Merrill. “There’s a difference.”

“You kids are crazy,” mutters the guard, awe-struck.

***

The holding cell is dark, dank, but Merrill supposes that was the point of it; Aveline said she’d meant to teach them a lesson, but the only lesson Merrill thinks she’s learning is about how to stave off pneumonia. She shivers, and tucks her bare toes under her hands.

Carver breaks his scrutiny of the cell’s colorfully stained ceiling to meet her gaze. Even in the dimness, his eyes are bright like lanterns. “Are you cold?”

Merrill nods, teeth chattering.

“Come here,” he says. He holds his arm up. Merrill scoots across the cell floor and leans into his arm. He is warm and grassy and smells like the open road and maybe a bit like mabari crunch, and it’s everything she needs right now and maybe even a little of what she wants, too. On her shoulder, his hand comes to an awkward rest; his touch lighter than even Wrinkles’s trunk.

“He’ll find his way to your clan,” he whispers thickly.

“How do you know?” She shivers once, violently, and he pulls her a little closer.

“Your vallaslin.” Carver brings his finger up as if he’s about to trace them, but then drops his hand awkwardly into his lap. “He memorized them. So he knows what to look for.”

“I hope you’re right.” She leans her head on his shoulder, her head fitting nicely into the crook of his neck. 

“I just wish it hadn’t taken us so long to convince him to come out of his cage,” sighs Carver. He rests his head against hers, cheek against her hair. “We could’ve gotten him halfway to Sundermount, if we’d thought of the crunch sooner.”

“I don’t know,” murmurs Merrill. Carver’s warmth, and the weight of his arm around her, is making her sleepy. “Looking back, I think we went about it all wrong.”

“Don’t say that,” he says, his fingers tightening on her shoulder. “We did the right thing.”

“No—I mean.” She sighs, long and low, like a stifled yawn. “I think I understand now why he didn’t go at first. You can’t give something its freedom, Carver. It has to be taken.”

He is silent a moment, and she can feel him holding his breath. “You can set up the opportunity, though.”

“Mmm.” She shifts, leaning further into him. She can barely keep her eyes open. “D’you think your mother will be mad?”

“Livid,” he chuckles. “Garrett too. I’m really in for it this time.”

“I wonder what Marethari’ll say. When she.” She swallows back the lump in her throat. “I wish—Well. Doesn’t matter what I wish.“

Carver pulls her closer, and wraps his other arm around her too. She falls into his embrace easily.

“Come by the house later,” he whispers, breath warm and soothing against her ear. “If you like, I’m sure Mother will have more than enough lecture for you too.”

“I’d like that,” she mutters, and closes her eyes at last.


	15. O is for Oliphant (epilogue)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Inspired by this photograph: http://flutiebear.tumblr.com/post/16607432203/effyeahelephants-c-axiom-photographic-an

They never caught Wrinkles, of course; but neither did he ever turn up at the Sundermount. When questioned about it later, Marethari frowned at the idea with such terrible force that Merrill realized she’d badly misjudged her Keeper; and _had_ a baby oliphant tromped through a camp full of starving hunters, he likely wouldn’t have met a particularly welcome reception. 

Lucky for Wrinkles then that he had gotten lost on his way to the largest mountain in the Marches. Seems he’d learned a lot from his liberators.

Merrill sometimes wondered where the oliphant had run off to. Had he turned course and braved the Waking Sea, so he could feel the cold squish of Fereldan mud between his toes?  Had the scent of some nutty Nevarran stew lured him westward, where he now lay curled upon a nest of moss and ferns, warm and safe in the gleaming necropolis of some ancient Pentaghast? Or had he swum all the way to Rivain, where surely he would have been welcomed as the avatar of some beloved Fade Spirit, selected as Honored Mount for only the holiest of Seers, where he could live to the end of his days surrounded by love and lady oliphants and venerated by all, even the tiniest white fish in the sea?

Merrill didn’t know, and probably would never know. Wrinkles had simply vanished, like Calenhad, like the Black Fox, like all the greatest heroes of old.

But real heroes never die, Varric assures her one night by the Hanged Man’s roaring fire, “because then they can’t come back for the sequel.”


	16. R is for Rules

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As far as I recall, the deal Merrill strikes with the demon is never explicitly described in game, so I went with my best guess of the terms here. 
> 
> I don’t think it’s overly head-canon-y to say that Merrill always expected to pay for the restoration of the Eluvian with her life, however. Consider this possible conversation from “A New Path”:
> 
> Hawke (if you choose “You weren’t listening” option): You knew consorting with demons was dangerous. You knew people could get hurt. And you did it anyway.  
> Merrill: If there was a price to pay, I should have paid it. She had no right to interfere.
> 
> Merrill always tried so hard to make sure that she was the only one who would ever be hurt should her plan backfire. But sadly, you just can’t control what other people do.

Before she lights the last lamp on the altar, Merrill looks over her shoulder once, briefly. No one is there, of course; it’s just her and the smiling statue carved into the mossed-over stone. The air here is sweet, clean; apparently even the rats and spiders know this particular cave is too holy to build a casual winter’s nest.

“I—I’m not sure if I’m doing this right,” Merrill mutters to the darkness. “Hopefully you can hear me.”

_I can hear you, falon’elvhen._

The voice is beautiful: the symphony of a thousand nightingales at dawn, or as a droplet of water hears the waterfall. Unbidden tears well in Merrill’s eyes, and before her, the altar dances in the dim candlelight.

“You have a lovely voice, spirit,” she says at last, wiping the wetness from her cheeks.

_So do you._

Remembering her training at last, she bows low; it wouldn’t do to be rude to the very spirit she wants to beseech.

“Great one, I come to request your aid,” says Merrill.

_I am at your whim._

“The Keeper says you’re old, really old.” She swallows down the lump in her throat. “So I hoped you might recognize this.”

From her hip pouch, Merrill draws the jagged shard of the broken mirror. The voice sighs, simultaneously anguished and relieved: like wind through the winter trees; like a mother finding her lost child, only to discover he has been gravely injured.

 _My precious Eluvian,_ it wails. _What have mortals done to her?_

“I-I’m sorry.” She looks down at the shard in her shaking hands. “A shemlen broke it.”

_But why—after all we gave, after all the love we offered, why?_

Merrill explains how Tamlen and Mahariel went missing months ago; how she and the rest of the clan had followed them to the ancient human ruin nearby. “That’s where we found the shemlen. He was just standing there, in front of the—the Eluvian,” she says, careful to use the same pronunciation the spirit did, “And then he just—smashed it, without even asking.”

_Human arrogance, _it wails,_ will be the destruction of us all._

Merrill nods. “He said it spread the Corruption, but—I don’t know. I think he only said that so that we wouldn’t be able to use it.”

_The Eluvian is a tool of communication, not sickness. It spreads harmony across great distances. That is its function: To serve the elvhen. Nothing more._

Merrill’s fist clenches around the shard, its edges digging deep into her staff callouses. “I knew he was lying,” she mutters.

_You must fix it, falon’elvhen. It is a symbol of the greatness of your people, and the friendship we share across the Veil._

“But how can I?” She looks up at the stone statue, into the tiny, empty eyesockets where once lay glittering gems. “You can’t exactly sew a mirror back together.”

_Blood magic._

Merrill scrunches her brow. “Would that even work? I thought blood magic was only to mind-walk or enter the Fade, not to fix artifacts.”

_It can do much more than that. Blood magic is the oldest magic, and the most powerful. Life begets life. It is the way of the mortal realm._

“But,” Merrill drops her gaze, “But I don’t know how.”

_I will teach you._

At once a wind begins to stir in the cave, swirling the dirt Merrill tracked in; and the flames lick at the air, joyous, alive.

_I witnessed the birth of the Eluvian. I tended to it as loving mother to fretful child, and I alone know the doorways it opens in the heart. Together we can re-make her. Together, we can be as one once more._

_“_ I don’t—wait, ‘mother’?” Merrill quirks an eyebrow. “Aren’t you a he?”

The voice laughs gently, kindly. _I am male and female, falon’elvhen, and neither at all. I am all genders and none. I am spirit._

“Oh, I’m sorry then _._ That must be very confusing for you.”

The voice chuckles again, the sound like pebbles tumbling down a rockface. _I like you, falon’elvhen. You have a kind and curious heart.  You are easy to trust._

“I’ve never heard of spirits liking anyone before,” she says, shrugging, “But thank you regardless.”

_Because of this, I will give you the power to restore my mirror—and with it, the power to restore your people to their rightful place in all the realms of Thedas._

Merrill suddenly has a vision of a ruin she’s never seen before. Indeed, it’s a ruin that isn’t ruined: it spreads across the horizon as far as she can see, gleams against the rising sun, its golden spires stretching to the clouds, red and white banners flapping in the breeze. It is whole, beautiful, perfect. 

“Is that—Arlathan?” she whispers, feeling the tears prickle her eyes once more.

_Imagine, falon’elvhen. No more running. No more broken clans. No more tents and scavenging, and shemlen gobbling up all the land. Only soaring castles, and empires, and all the warmth and food and comfort you deserve.  And you can give it to your people, falon'elvhen. You can give them all._

The vision dissolves and is replaced by the swirling Eluvian, the mirror of many colors and none, made whole once more.

_Fix my mirror, and you will return to your people everything they lost and more. There will be no more fear or sorrow or compromise. Only justice. Only tranquility. Only peace._

“I—I just want to find Tamlen and Mahariel,” she whispers.

_Then you can use my mirror to find them. You can use my mirror to find anyone, any place. All the lands and times and peoples will bow to the Elvhen’s command._

“Tamlen,” she murmurs. Merrill scrutinizes the statue’s graven grin, but finds no fault in the carving, no quirk of treacherous stone. “What’s the price?” The voice is silent. “For teaching me. Don’t think I don’t know. Spirits always have a price that must be paid.”

 _You are learned as well as curious._ The voice pauses, the hush after a snowfall. _You. You are my blood price. Your life, for the life of your people. That is my rule._

Merrill sighs in relief. She didn’t know what she’d expected, but her own life—well, she assumed the spirit would ask for something more difficult to part with.

Still, it wouldn’t do to seem too eager to a spirit; as Marethari taught her, spirits could sense the inner workings of your heart, and use them against you. She narrows her eyes shrewdly. “How do I know you will keep your end of the bargain once I am gone?”

_Despite what your Keepers tell you, spirits always keep their promises. We don’t lie. We lack the ability. Lies are inventions, and as you know only mortals can create._

She peers at the altar. “Then I have a rule too.”

_I am at your whim._

“This begins and ends with me,” she says, crossing her arms. “Do you understand? No possessing my clan, or the Keeper, or anyone else in Thedas.” She frowns. “Not even a toad. You get one body, and then your time is over; it’s back to the Fade with you.”

The voice hesitates, the altar light flickers.

_You strike a hard bargain, falon’elvhen._

She stifles a proud smile. “That is my rule,” she says.

_Very well, I accept._

“Alright then. So do I.”

Merrill closes her eyes, braces herself.

 _What are you doing?_ The voice titters, like gossiping starlings in flight. 

“You said you needed my body, didn’t you?” Merrill takes a deep breath and raises her arms. “Well, come on in. It’s yours.”

_Oh, falon’elvhen. I cannot take it now. You must fix my mirror first. Once it is fixed, only then we shall become as one._

“Oh,” says Merrill, dropping her arms. “But I still don’t know how.”

_Prepare yourself. I shall teach you._

Then the visions begin: Merrill carving into her own arm, the blood dripping on the shards, seeping in, purifying the glass; the colors, so many colors; a curling golden frame, carved from ironbark; books, many books, written in a language she can’t read; now Merrill laying shards together; and Merrill on her knees, toiling over glass; Merrill running a strange, curved dagger across the surface; Merrill touching the shimmering Eluvian, swirling with light and color, made whole once more.

_I believe in you, falon’elvhen. I know you can do this for both of us._

“For both of us,” she says, and smiles.


	17. S is for Sylaise

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a continuation, of sorts, of "M is for Mythallen", and takes place shortly after Sylaise gives her speech at the vhenadahl tree in the Shadows chapter, "Dissension I: Security Detail".

“But it’s the Templars, Sylaise.” Merrill wrinkles her nose, trying to her best to pretend that it’s the principle, and not the specifics, of the matter that disgusts her. She still hasn’t seen Carver in months – almost a year, actually – and she’d like to keep it that way, if for no other reason than her work on the Eluvian has never been gone more smoothly. “I just don’t think we ought to attract any more attention to the alienage than necessary.”

“’We’?” Quirking an eyebrow, Sylaise peers intently at Merrill. “I thought you were too good for the Mythallen.”

Shrugging, Merrill turns away from the blonde elf’s scrutiny, and puts another book back on her bookshelf. “We’re all part of the alienage. What one does affects us all.”

“This isn’t the Dales, Merrill, and we aren’t your clan.” Sylaise idly runs one long finger along Merrill’s dinner table, tracing a small whorl to its conclusion. Suddenly she jabs the wood with her fingertip. “If I want to stab, or shout, or fuck my way through the Templars, you don’t get to say anything about it. And, for that matter, neither do I.”

She looks up from the table with a vicious smirk.

“But your speeches—the anti-Qunari posters—You can’t keep putting these people in danger.” Merrill folds her arms and assumes her best authoritative frown. “I—I forbid it.”

Sylaise erupts into piercing laughter. She doubles over, clutching her belly. She sounds like a jabbering genlock, or the drunks at the Hanged Man when Isabela isn’t around.

Then, just as suddenly as it began, the laughter stops. Silence falls, thick like snow.

“You.” Slowly Sylaise rights herself and takes a step toward Merrill. Her expression is placid, the dirt-caked lines of her face smooth. “You _forbid_ it.”

“Someone has to,” says Merrill, letting her hands fall to her sides. She has faced down darkspawn and dragons and a disappointed Keeper. She can’t let herself be cowed by laughter, no matter how feral or hungry, nor how frighteningly fast it might fade.

“Who are you to forbid anything?” Sylaise takes another step forward. She’s close now; close enough to smell the stench of Darktown in her dirty hair, to see the congealed blood spattered like raindrops on her well-used leathers. Her mouth is a thin line, like the cleft in a mountainface, the kind in which spiders and snakes make their roost. “You’re just a dirty shem-fucker with a chip on her shoulder.”

Merrill tries to summon her voice, but finds it difficult to find anything past the lump in her throat. Sylaise’s mouth splits open, tugging into a wide, yellowed grin.

“No, not on her shoulder. In her _hand_ ,” she hisses. Without taking her eyes off Merrill, she jerks her head toward the Eluvian in the corner. “Because if anyone would bring the tinmen sniffing about, it’s you, hmm? I wonder what they’d think that mirror of yours.”

 “I’m not afraid of you,” Merrill whispers, clenching her fist. “If you won’t stop, then I’ll have to stop you myself.”

Suddenly, daggers flashing, Sylaise lunges forward.

Their bodies collide, and before Merrill can react, Sylaise pins her against the wall. One arm catches Merrill under the chin, while the other buries a dagger deep into the wall, the blade an inch from Merrill’s ear. Merrill shoves back, but Sylaise is immovable, inescapable.

“Best of luck trying,” Sylaise whispers, green eyes glittering like a serpent’s, “ _lathaleen._ ”

Then she tugs the dagger free and, pointedly turning her back on Merrill, saunters out the door.


	18. T is for Terrors

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This update takes place during the fight with Leopold in “Masks”, right after Merrill gets hit with the wyvern poison. If you haven’t read “Masks XXVIII: Listen to My Hands”, it might be a good idea to do so first, so you know what’s going on here, and what's reality versus hallucination.
> 
> Also, given what wyvern poison does to you, this update’s quite dark and, um, icky. So: fair warning.

Merrill feels, more than sees, the green gob of wyvern poison connect with her neck, the weight of it like a splash of ocean spray against her face and shoulder. At first, it doesn’t hurt; it just _is_ : sizzling, putrid, like the smell of rotting eggs, only so much fouler.

She almost begins to believe she might be immune to the poison when the first wave of agony ripples through her. At once her blood begins to roil, every nerve sparking. Flames crawl in her veins. Lights dance in her eyes. Her bones begin to dance of their own accord. Merrill screams.

Her spine arches, tries to double back on itself, and suddenly strong arms are around her, swatting at her neck, smearing away the poison. She rolls her eyes up.

“Tamlen!” she cries. It is him, but not him: His sunken eyes are clouded with Corruption, the veins black against his sallow skin. His once beautiful hair is matted and clumped with entrails; he stinks of burning flesh and sulfur.

His mouth splits open wide, lips leathery, teeth rotted, tongue black and lolling. “You did this to me, _lethallan,_ ” he whispers fondly. A maggot falls out of his ear.

She scrabbles against his chest, and he only tightens his arms around her. “Tamlen!” she manages to say again, but only with great effort; her mouth no longer seems to move at her command.

Gently he lays her down on the ground, which suddenly is now a human funeral pyre, lit for its charge. The flames lick her feet and scorch her bare toes. She writhes to escape, but there is no escape, not even in death: only fire and smoke; only more agony.

She hears a shriek, and next to her is Marethari, stripped of her Dalish tunic and dressed in a Chantry Mother’s robe. She is tied to a spit like a halla for the feast. “You did this to me, _da’len_ ,” she sobs as her hair crackles like kindling. “You brought the Templars upon us.”

Merrill’s spine contorts again, and through the flames she can see them, thousands of Templars marching toward her, sunlight shining off their armor, no light of life behind their helmet visors, the tromp of boots like the charge of a wyvern herd.

“Don’t try to come closer,” she tries to say, but she can’t because now her face is covered in a Chasind-style wyvern skin mask; her mouth coarsely sewn into a pucker, blood and drool still seeping from the stitches. Wind howls through the empty sockets where her eyes once lay.

She stretches out her hand and tries to unleash a blast of spirit lightning to divert their charge, but all she can manage are a few sparks, running up and down her skin.

She sobs and her spine seizes again and the Templars become trees, and the pyre an aravel, whisking her away from the Nevarran mountains and toward the Fereldan coast. The red sails slap and boom in the wind, and warmth turns to bitter chill, and someone is crying—maybe it’s her mother, maybe it’s her. Merrill looks over the side of the aravel and fall onto the blurring path, becoming part of the road, drowning in the cold mud.  She tries to call for help. But nobody can hear a mud-child; nobody speaks the language of rocks and soil. So she falls and falls, into the earth, the ground swallowing her up, down, down, into the lightless deep. 

“Hybris,” she moans, but through her sewn mouth it comes out as a slur of breath and drool.

 _I am here, falon’elvhen._ Something cool touches her forehead, and she knows it must be the spirit, her savior.

“Help me, Hybris,” she sobs, as her body seizes in another wave of agony. “Please.”

_I cannot, falon’elvhen. You have failed us both._

Then before her in the underground is the golden city Hybris once showed her, its soaring spires gleaming and proud, banners flapping in the breeze. But now the horde of Templars marches upon it, their swords held high, shouting all glory to the Maker. Yet these are no faceless knights: Now Aveline bashes down the golden gates, now Isabela tosses pitch and oil from the parapets onto screaming elves, and Fenris and Hawke smash small children against the stones. They paint the shining walls with the blood of elvhen until it turns black, and together Anders and Varric slowly raise up new banners, blood-stained ones emblazoned with the Chantry sun.

“You did this to Arlathan,” says Fenris. “You did this to our people.”

She tries to protest, to scream, to make any noise at all. Nothing comes, only more pain.

Her heart beats again and the city dissolves, and she is back in her house. The Eluvian stands before her, complete, perfect. Its surface swirls with all colors and none. She touches it, but then the surface shatters, and the pieces lift away from the frame and impale her, millions of them, through every vein and artery, bleeding out her life, one heartbeat at a time. Everything bleeds away, even the light, slowly, slowly, until nothing is left.

 _You did this,_ says her spirit, except now it has her voice. _You are entropy, you are chaos._ _Everything you touch falls apart._

She seizes again, her entire spine convulsing, and the last of the light finally fades, leaving her alone in the nothingness. She is not floating, not falling. She simply _is._ She tries to cast lightning to see, but the sparks snuff out of their own accord; the darkness smothers out even her magic. Nothing is here, no life, no death, no spirits, no air to breathe, no time, no space, no self, and she will die here, eventually, whoever she is, alone, lost, terrified. 

She gives up, and waits for death to come.

Instead, something tugs on her hand.

It is warm. Strong. Insistent. She steps forward.

The darkness suddenly smells like Fereldan grass, and sword oil, and sweat, and home. She likes that smell, even though she knows she shouldn’t. It’s dirty, ephemeral; a sacrilege. But she doesn’t care, not anymore.

The force – a hand – draws her to the side, and she follows. 

Now another hand splays on the small of her back, guiding her, supporting her, speaking to her in a language without words: just forces and unseen impulses, and the inevitability of gravity.  She is aware of warmth now, of the space between two bodies, that tense connection between fingers and skin, and a palm’s hesitant touch in the dark.

The hand guides her backwards, and she follows.

There is light now, if not vision, and air, if not breath. Time and space and self return. She is Merrill. She hears voices. Feels breezes. Smells the Fereldan grass, strong, alluring, irresistible.

_Listen to my hands._

“Carver?” she mumbles. The wyvern mask is gone, but she still has no speech, so she just mouths the words as best she can. “Is that you?”

_Listen to them, not me._

The hands draw her to the other side, back to the start. She feels the weight of herself, the heaviness, the dimension returning. Within her, magic crackles to life.

The hands bring hers to a pair of unseen lips, and she feels a gentle kiss on the staff callous of her thumb. “Listen.”

The world flares to sound, and pressures, and color. Merrill aches, her spine like a rag that has been wrung out too many times.  

“Merrill, time to open your eyes,” she hears the voice whisper.

After an eternity, she manages to open her eyes. Carver kneels above her. His eyes are fixed on hers, brilliant, blue, beautiful, the color of the sky and water and of light and life itself _._

“ _Vhenan_ ,” she sighs. She feels the weight of his hand, warm and insistent against hers, and smiles.


	19. U is for Ungrateful

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the last “true” Merrill Alphabet update; "V" is a little different, you'll see.
> 
> This one indirectly references the events of "F is for Fool" and "Masks XXX: Goodbyes".

“No, really, thank you, Hawke.” Merrill sits gingerly at the edge of the bed, next to her tightly-packed shoulder bag, and re-checks the fastener to the side pouch where Carver’s mask is. She refuses to look Garrett in the eye, because there’s no resisting a Fereldan with a pout, even one who keeps his partially concealed behind a beard, and she can’t let pity keep her rooted in this house for another week. “It’s a kind offer, and I don’t want to seem ungrateful. But I’ve been away from the alienage long enough.“

“If it’s the rats you’re worried about,” Garrett says, his voice too loud and full for the room, “I’m sure they’ll find other toes to nibble on.”

She grimaces. The thing about Hawke men she both loves and hates is that you never know when they’re serious, because everything they say sounds like a dirty joke—even the dirty jokes, or the jokes about things being dirty.

“I need to go home,” she murmurs.

“The alienage isn’t your home, Merrill.”

Heat prickles her cheeks. Merrill hates that he’s right, but more than that, she resents how easily he can say it: just six words sliding off his tongue as easy as how-do-you-do. How a refugee can be so cruel, she’ll never know; but clearly Carver was right: Garrett’s coin _has_ made him forget more than just the pinch of hunger.

Garrett sits heavily on the opposite edge of the bed, the full pack between them. “You’d already be home,” he mutters, “if you wanted to be.”

“Hawke.” She leans forward and clasps her hands together between her knees. “Garrett. I have—duties.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Merrill sees Garrett’s beard twitch. “To who? To those people who rioted? The ones who sold you out to the Templars?”

Merrill looks down at her hands, and brushes the edge of one thumb against the staff callous on the other. Sometimes, she still feels the ghostly heat of Carver’s lips there, on the inside of her thumb, and she has to rub at it until the sensation fades away. Now, however, it is more comfort than annoyance. “To my _people_ ,” she says. “All elves, everywhere. I have to see this through.”

“Merrill.” Garrett extends a hand and rests it on her shoulder. His palm is too hot and too heavy. “See _what_ through? What aren’t you telling me?”

She sighs. Three months ago, she would have delighted in that awkward touch, the broken angles and strange weight of it against his shoulder. Now she wonders how she’d ever convinced herself of her infatuation. Isabela was right: Garrett is not his brother. That much is clear. Carver would understand. She wouldn’t have to explain this to him, any of it. He wouldn’t even need to ask.

“I can’t, Hawke. Not yet. Almost—but it’s not ready. And when it is, I’ll—“ She swallows, trying to think of anything to say other than _say farewell,_ “show you. I promise.”

Garrett drops his hand from her shoulder. “Fine,” he says. “Keep your secrets.”

They sit together in silence for a time, Merrill staring at her hands, Garrett staring into the fireplace. The air between them is tense, charged, like kindling just before it pops. Eventually, however, Garrett tilts his chin slightly toward Merrill and clears his throat. “Does my brother know?”

“What?” Merrill turns to Garrett at last. The firelight carves deep grooves around his mouth, his eyes, like the furrows in tree bark, but she has little pity left in her for pouting Fereldans now.

Hawke does not flinch from her stony gaze. “I saw the way you two were looking at each other at Chateau Haine,” he says in a voice too casual to be truly casual. “You’re only lucky Varric wasn’t there. It would’ve made it into his next serial for sure.“

Merrill clenches her hands. “We weren’t looking at each other any which way,” she lies.

Garrett sighs, his face softening. “My brother’s a good man, but—“ He looks away, back toward the fireplace. His hands fidget with the hem of his house robe. “He’s a Templar, Merrill. Even you can’t be that stupid.”

“You sound like Anders,” she says, stung and not bothering to hide it. “Have some faith in him. He hasn’t dragged _you_ in yet.”

“I’m his brother,” he says simply. “You’re a blood mage.”

Merrill sucks in a breath and leans back on her palms. Her arm brushes the side of her bag, and the faint outline of Carver’s mask. She remembers the way the burnished silverite framed his face, like some hero of Arlathan right out of one of Hahren Paivel’s stories. Within her, shame flares, hot and vivid.

“He wouldn’t hurt me,” she whispers.

“He wouldn’t need to.” Garrett drops the hem and sighs. “He’d just have to be careless. Then it wouldn’t matter which mountain in Orlais we hid under. The Order would find you. All of us.”

Lips pinching together, she sits upright again. “Keep your advice for someone who needs it,” she says through clenched teeth. “Carver is nothing to me.”

“Right,” he says, not even giving her the courtesy of sounding convinced.

Merrill stands up and grabs the strap of her shoulder bag. The mask bumps painfully against her thigh.

“I should go before it gets much darker,” she says stiffly. “Don’t want to be caught crossing Old Town by myself after the Dog Lords come out.”

Garrett does not stand. “Want me to walk you to the alienage?”

“No,” she says. She strides toward the door, then, with her hand on the door jamb, turns to face him. “Thank you, Hawke,” she says softly. “For everything. I mean it.”

Garrett merely shrugs.

“You’re family, Merrill.”  He turns his gaze back to the fireplace. “Anytime.”


	20. V is for Vhenan

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Time for Carver to finally discover what Merrill was actually saying all that time in Orlais...

For a moment, Carver does not blink, or even breathe, just stares blankly down at the page. 

He has a brief, vivid flash of the Tower of Ishal: the white blaze like a torch against the clouded sky, flaring to life amidst so much death; a bright, unmistakable beacon of hope—met with nothing.

That day at Ostagar, he learned two important lessons: One, that he was living in the End Days of Thedas; and two, that hope was a false promise, something he should never again be tricked into trusting. Hope was a distraction, as useful as ruffles on a dragon, and it couldn’t swing your sword for you; always you needed to be able to stand alone, because nothing, nobody, not even the Grey Wardens or a dragon swooping from the sky, could ever be trusted to save you.

So when he feels the hope spark inside him, he Silences it brutally, before it can latch on.

He shoves the book away from him, as if the words themselves had the Corruption; as if he’d only need to read them to contract the Taint too. It slides across the table but refuses to fall off the edge and out of sight.

Carver doesn’t know how long he sits there, arms crossed, chin lifted, waiting, watching. But he doesn’t feel much like rising to his feet, or taking his eyes off the book, because that means he’ll have to think, to process, to feel—and hope is not to be trusted.

“There you are,” comes a voice behind him, and it takes him a moment to realize that the words are meant for him, that this is a voice he knows. He turns around. “I was beginning to forget what you looked like.”

“Moira,” he sighs. He stands up and embraces her, but he doesn’t quite turn his back on the open book still lying on the table. Carver kisses her forehead. She smells of apples, not blackberries, and he can’t tell if that’s what he wants or only what he needs. “I was just coming to find you.”

“Well, I wouldn’t be in the _library_ ,” she says, pulling away from him. Despite her smile, there is no humor in her eyes; even Carver can tell she’s more hurt than she looks. “Gone for six weeks and the first thing you do is run to the stacks?”

“Sorry, Apples, I just needed to look something up.” He reaches for her at the same time as she reaches for the book. She closes the cover, the offending page lost, and Carver lets go a breath he didn’t know he was holding.

“To look something up—“ She looks at the cover and quirks an eyebrow. “—in an elvhen dictionary. _Carver_.” Putting the book down, she looks up at him with a smirk careful enough to conceal all her stronger emotions. “Were you possessed by Dalish blood mages in Orlais?”

“No,” he says, though it feels like lying. “Just really bad ham.”

“Hmm,” she says in a way that invites him to touch her, to enjoy her, to allow himself to be enjoyed; but he’s not sure he wants to be welcomed back to the Order just yet. So he closes his eyes, and tries to think.

“Carver,” she murmurs, her hand on his cheek, “what’s going on?”

With his eyes closed, he sees the words on the page again:

> **Vhenan** **:** (VEY-nahn): noun  
>  heart, esp. in use as “ma vhenan”, a Dalish term of endearment meaning “my heart”.

He opens his eyes and sighs.

“Moira.” He leans into her touch. “Do you love me?”

She lets her hand drop. Her eyes narrow. “Where did this come from?”

Carver shrugs, or flinches; it doesn’t matter. “Maybe I missed you.”

“I know you’ve been gone awhile, but that’s no reason to—“ She holds him at arms’ length, although her elbows bend, as if she’d really like to draw him closer. Her eyes pierce his. He can’t hold the gaze. “A soldier keeps her fucks and her feelings separate,” she says coolly, like she’s reciting Transfigurations. “You don’t owe me anything, Carver.”

He suppresses the urge to shove her away right then, to run away from this rotted library and never look back. As it is, he recoils a bit from the void between them, and the hot and heavy weight of her palm against his elbow. But fleeing now would be just as bad as not fleeing, because both amount to the same thing: running, forever running, and never knowing when or how to stop.

That’s all Moira has ever been: the setting sun, the distant horizon; the unending road. But all he ever really wanted was to have a destination in mind.

“I know,” he says.

“Good.” She slings an arm around his waist.

He does not lean into her. “Good.”

As he leaves, he casts one last look behind him, at the closed book, and once more feels that small, treacherous hope flicker inside him. He tries to Silence it again, to appreciate what he has and what is here and now and wriggling warm and soft against his side.

But he can’t.

Because although sometimes when the Tower is lit it's met only with the cries of darkspawn; sometimes, the Tower isn’t even lit at all, but a dragon swoops down and rescues you from the slavering horde anyway.


End file.
